A study co-authored by Prof. David Autor shows that voters living in regions of the country that saw an increase in Chinese imports were more receptive to President-elect Donald Trump’s anti-free trade message, writes Bob Davis for The Wall Street Journal. The researchers found “import competition from China damaged local economies and undermined employment and wages.”
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Senior Lecturer Robert Pozen argues that index stock options are the best way to ensure CEOs are paid based on their performance. “Indexed options are designed to reward managerial skill instead of fortuitous movements of the stock market,” he writes, citing Prof. Bengt Holmstrom’s Nobel-prize winning research on incentives.
Writing for The New York Times, David Leonhardt highlights a study by MIT researchers that examines the effectiveness of charter schools. Prof. Joshua Angrist explains that the study found that “relative to other things that social scientists and education policy people have tried to boost performance — class sizes, tracking, new buildings — these schools are producing spectacular gains.”
In a letter to The Boston Globe, graduate student Elizabeth Setren writes about her study examining whether charter schools can help benefit special education and English-language learners. Setren writes that her findings “paint a picture of impressive gains and increased inclusion for special-education students and English-language learners at Boston charters.”
The Washington Post’s Karin Brulliard writes that MIT researchers have found that like health care costs for humans, the cost of health care spending on pets is rising. Brulliard explains that the researchers found it was “‘noteworthy’ that the parallels between the two systems exist even though insurance and government regulation…are less prevalent in pet health care.”
Washington Post reporter Carolyn Johnson writes that a study by Prof. Amy Finkelstein finds that expanding Medicaid access increases emergency room visits. “People who gained Medicaid visited the emergency room about 65 percent more often than individuals who did not gain Medicaid in the first six months -- and the trend continued out to two years.”
NPR’s Steve Inskeep notes that in a 2010 episode of “The Simpsons” Milhouse van Houten predicts that Prof. Bengt Holmström will win a Nobel Prize in economics. Inskeep jokes that Milhouse was a visionary, who “knew way before the rest of the world that MIT's Bengt Holmström had genius in him.”
Nobel laureate Prof. Bengt Holmström speaks with NPR’s Steve Inskeep about the importance of incentives. Holmström recounts becoming interested in incentives while working at a multinational conglomerate after realizing computers could not “replace a lot of what the human mind is thinking,” adding that incentives are how “you influence people’s behavior.”
In an article for The Boston Globe, Steve Annear notes that during an episode of “The Simpsons” Milhouse Van Houten predicts that MIT Prof. Bengt Holmström will win a Nobel prize in economics. Annear writes that “Milhouse’s prediction was spot on — but a few years too early. On Monday, Holmström finally earned his due.”
BBC News reporter Atish Patel reports on a new study, co-authored by Prof. Abhijit Banerjee, that found informal health care providers in India can improve with modest training. The researchers found that those who had undergone training were more likely to “adhere to checklists after training and made big improvements in providing correct treatments.”
Charles Duxbury and Mike Bird write for The Wall Street Journal that Prof. Bengt Holmström is one of the recipients of the 2016 Nobel Prize in economics. Holmström was honored, in part, for developing a model that examines “how pay should be linked to performance and how an optimal contract carefully weighs risks against incentives.”
Prof. Bengt Holmström received the Nobel Prize in economics for his research on contract theory, writes Chris Giles for the Financial Times. Holmström, who said he was “dazed … very surprised and very happy” about winning the award, found “an optimal contract should link payments to outcomes that reveal the performance of either party to a contract.”
Lisa Mullins of WBUR’s All Things Considered speaks with Prof. Bengt Holmström about winning the Nobel Prize in economics for his work examining how contracts motivate and affect people’s behavior. Holmström explains, “incentives are not just about paying people, it is also about job design.”
Prof. Bengt Holmström and Harvard Prof. Oliver Hart were awarded the Noel Prize in economics for their work on how to design better contracts, Deirdre Fernandes and Hiawatha Bray report for The Boston Globe. “Bengt and Oliver’s research has not only helped us to better understand incentives and institutions, it has helped us design better ones,” explains Prof. James Poterba.
Jeff Guo writes for The Washington Post about Prof. Bengt Holmström, one of the recipients of this year’s Nobel Prize in economics. “It’s just such a richly deserved prize,” said Glenn Ellison, head of MIT’s economics department. “Bengt’s work is outstanding both for answering really important questions, and for how beautifully crafted it is mathematically.”